Yard Paintings • Tanya Villanueva

The artist literally paints by the yard, in the multiple sense of the word. She sets up her studio beside a compound’s parking lot: a space that has served as a basketball court, a patch of overgrown grass, a community playground and a field of manicured greenery over the years. She channels dead energy from this place, now abandoned and damp; re-animating that which, in her words, seems to have lost interest for change.

An interesting shift ensues in this drab, dead space: a primal energy takes over as it is occupied by the artist, who works and spins out rolls of paintings that stretch out to a total of 18 yards. The passage of time contracts and expands with these acts of painting: immersed in hours of thinking until there is nothing left to paint or, conversely, until there is something to paint. Time is spent, wasted: minutes feel like hours, hours feel like minutes. The technical discipline and routine of painting, which measures time, material and effort, takes over and merges with one’s transient thoughts and feelings. The artist asks: I am painting long: long enough?

About the artist

Tanya Villanueva majored in Painting at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts (UP CFA), capping her studies as a recipient for the UP CFA Centennial Grant for Outstanding Thesis in 2008. She held her first solo exhibition in 2011. She lives and works in Quezon City.